


Blue

by wehangout



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 5.06 spoilers, A LOT of Angst, Angst, Blood, M/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 13:44:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3412847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wehangout/pseuds/wehangout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Ian Gallagher comes to you in radiant colour, it’s an all over body shot of freckles and eyes and hair, blazing into your retinas, making you a little crazy. He’s bright, so fucking bright, and maybe that explains why you let him suck your dick only moments later, why you messily jack him off not long after that, but you don’t think so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Dee and Annie for reading over this. Hope you all enjoy it!

For as long as you can remember, your life has been highlighted by vivid streaks of fucked up colour; plum velvet, coral, mint green, turquoise, midnight blue, magenta - the list goes on, and yeah, you do know all the names of every fucking shade.

You don’t know why; why you see everything in normal colour, but some things in the most vibrant hues you could possibly imagine. You don’t know if you were born this way, if it’s from too many hits to the head from Terry, or if it’s some kind of psychological bullshit. But it’s there. You’ve learned to live with it. Hell, you kinda like it.

And you’ve read up on it, in the non-nerdiest way possible. Not the reason for the sudden shocks of colour, but the colours themselves, the shades and the exact name for that exact shade, because once you realised this wasn’t normal, once you began to hold your breath everyday for those occasional splashes of intensity that would shine through, you were desperate to have the name for them. Desperate to put the proper name to the right hue.

For a while there, it becomes a bit of an obsession.

Understandably, being that it was the only cool thing in your life.

Some days you walk outside to see the bluest of blue skies watching over you, the kind of blue you’ve never seen before and know you’ll never fucking see again. It’s one of the few colours you’ve never been able to put a name to, only knowing that, somehow, it’s some strange mix of blue orchard and butterfly blue.

It’s fucking awesome, and you think that blue might be your favourite colour.

The colours come to you through everything; swirls of bright red blood going down the shower drain after a good beating from Terry, smudges of plum pie before Mandy went off to a party, slips of caramel on a particular porno mag you can never buy at the Kash and Grab.

Growing up, Mandy was always flashes of pink and purple skirts, yellow and orange headbands, saffron and maroon hair. Now when Mandy shows you colour, it’s only ever angry blue eyes. She’s angry with you a lot these days.

Because of Ian.

Always Ian

Everything in your life right now comes back to Ian.

\-----

You don’t know what to say, so you say nothing. You can’t stop yourself from moving, though, from _doing_ something. You have to do something because you just can’t fucking stand there, watching. Not when Ian is being hugged by his sister, his eyes not once lifting to find yours.

But he knows you’re there. His gaze landed on your body and refused to go any higher. Stopped dead at the fucking sight of you.

So you move forward to hug him. Lip got to, so did Debbie, and you want to. You don’t give a shit who sees; you need to touch him, to fucking feel him against you, hold him close, caress any piece of his skin you can get your fucking hands on, just to feel his warmth and know that he’s there, he’s fucking alive and _there._

When he gets close enough that he really can’t avoid your eyes any longer, your entire body hums with pain, but you push past it, ignore it in favour of making Ian’s pain go away, of ending all the fear and confusion and _gone_ in his eyes, because he looks so scared, so fucking scared that you can barely breathe.

A hand to his neck. Your hand. His neck. And his eyes lower and you can almost hear his voice, broken and quiet. _Mick._

You don’t stop to think, to look at him, take in him and his appearance, because you can’t. Just fucking can’t. If you see it too much, see it right in front of you, looking at you with nothing but everything it his eyes, you’ll break. You’ll fucking break, and it’s not time to break yet.

You just keep going, move forward, grasp him, breathe him in, squeeze hard enough that you hope to fuck he can still feel you days from now. You make sure he knows. You need him to know. It will be okay. You’ll do everything you fucking can to make sure it will be okay. He will be okay.

But even when you pull back, grip his shoulder and glance around the station instead of looking at Ian, instead of saying everything you want and need to say, you can’t get his face out of your mind, the way he looked at you when you walked up to him.

He was terrified. Of you. Of your reaction. Of you not forgiving him.

He doesn’t realise that you forgave him the second you found out he was okay.

You don’t realise until you’re climbing into the car next to him, his insecure face still etched into your mind, that this is the first time since you’ve really known him that Ian wasn’t in bright flashes of colour in some way or another.

\-----

The first time Ian Gallagher comes to you in radiant colour, it’s an all over body shot of freckles and eyes and hair, blazing into your retinas, making you a little crazy. He’s bright, so fucking bright, and maybe that explains why you let him suck your dick only moments later, why you messily jack him off not long after that, but you don’t think so.

It definitely has something to do with it. It has to. You’ve known for a long time what you prefer when it comes to sex, to life, but to let that take control of you, while Mandy and Terry are in the same fucking house as you, is just plain stupid. For days you put the entire fucking thing down to the fact that, beneath you, between your open legs, Gallagher was real and intense and - and fucking amazing.

And his blazing blue eyes were the best fucking thing you had ever seen.

But you continue to push those thoughts away because they’re not okay thoughts for a fucking guy like you to have. Ever. You’re not stupid. You might not know what’s up with your eyesight and the magnificent colours you often see, but fuck if you don’t know exactly what being openly … _not into chicks_ in this neighbourhood will do to you.

Hell, being that in this house alone will kill you. Literally. Despite the size of the blue sky when it really comes out to play, the colour you see clear and shiny most often is red. Always red, and almost always blood - your blood, Iggy’s blood, Mandy’s blood. Lots of blood. Too much blood.

But when Gallagher comes that day, hot and messy all over your hand, the brilliant blood-reds in your memory get taken over by his shock of his hair, the flush of his cheeks, and his bit-swollen bottom lip.

He’s mostly back to normal the next time you see him, and that’s how you know you can’t put that whole incident down to the colour. Because the only thing buzzing about him is his eyes, his eyes, his fucking eyes, and yes, blue is definitely your favourite colour.

You do it again, though, this time letting him - insisting that he - bend you over the freezer and fuck you.

It’s pure want and need - want to have someone fuck you like you want to be fucked, need to have someone touch you with hot hands and no judgements - and it hasn’t got a fucking thing to do with how bright he is or isn’t.

\-----

The night you find Ian in the club is without a fucking doubt, on your list of top ten worst nights ever. And you’ve had some shitty nights in your life - Mom dying, marrying Svetlana, drinking heavily in your room hoping to fuck that Terry doesn’t bring in another whore for you to fuck - but this makes the list without thought.

It _hurts._ Of course, you’ve hurt since that day in your bedroom, that day you … that day you just couldn’t …

But this is different. That hurt has been a constant throbbing pain that never went away. It’s there when you sleep, there when you wake, there when you try fucking some ginger chick to forget. It was there, and even now that you’ve found Ian, you’re not sure it’ll ever go away.

But this pain is different. This is a soul-crushing pain that takes over everything you are, have ever been, and could ever be. And it’s entirely self-inflicted. Ian’s spending his nights drug-fucked, grinding on some old dude’s lap, while other people watch on like the fucking perverts they are. Because of you.

You want to hit him, and when that thought comes to you, you’re honestly not sure who it is you’re thinking about - the rich old guy feeling up an underage dancer, or the said dancer who used to be your … something. He was your something.

When you make him stand and he won’t even look at you, you realise you’re his nothing now. Nothing. And all the stark flashes of blue and red that you think are pretty common for a club like this go dull.

You don’t want to hit Ian.

You want Ian to hit you.

\-----

Ian falls asleep not long into the car ride back to Chicago. You watch him, press your cheek and mouth to his hair, breathe him in, grip his arm hard enough to wake him if he wasn’t still a little out of it from the sedation. You watch him, feel his body move against you, the ins and outs of his breathing making your own heart stutter until you’re breathing in sync with him.

The sun comes up and it’s nothing. Just the usual yellow that rises everyday. Nothing is bright. It’s occurs to you that Ian’s energetic colours have been slowly ebbing away for a while now.

He shifts against you, sniffs. You wait. Nothing. You press against him briefly, until it becomes too much and if you stay that close to him, you’ll break. It’s not time to break yet.

You look out the window, talk to Lip, hate yourself and everything about you for … for everything. You should have done something sooner. You don’t want to do what you might have to do now. You will do whatever it takes, even if it means losing Ian.

Lip, oddly enough, is nice about it. Realistic, but agrees with you. Ian needs help. You’ll both do whatever it takes. And then he’s too nice, and you stare out the window, swallow that lump in your throat and push back the burning behind your eyes.

\-----

You start dreaming in futuristically bright colours after Ian leaves, and it’s the craziest fucking thing ever. Because, if there’s ever been two things you could rely on with your weird colour thing, it’s that your dreams are always dreary in colour, and that the eyes of Ian Gallagher always stand out. Every fucking time you see him.

Two nights after Ian leaves your bedroom, after Mandy finally tells you that Ian has definitely gone, you have your first colour-filled nightmare.

You wake gasping for breath, heart crumbling as it beats against your ribcage. You stumble to your bathroom, pretty sure you’re about to fucking die, and puke out every last drop of beer and vodka you had consumed the night before. A quick _rap-rap-rap_ comes at the door mid-vomit, and you rush to lock it, puking on the floor, but not wanting or needing anyone to see you like this.

Sick to the stomach over a fucking dream. Unsure how you’re going to survive from now because of a dream about Ian. Trembling, with dry sobs racking your body due to a dream where Ian dies in that goddamn war he’s signed himself up for.

You thought the blood on Mandy’s face was bad. You thought the blood on your leg when you got shot was bad. Hell, you thought the blood you and Ian were both covered in that day on the couch was bad. Nothing. Not a fucking thing compares to seeing Ian’s blood pooling around him, sparkling and striking like it was meant to be something good.

Dream or not, it’s quickly added to your list.

Everything red becomes blood again.

\-----

Not long after you begin fucking Gallagher, what colour might stand out each day no longer becomes your sole focus. It’s not what your small world revolves around each day, and you hate yourself for it. Even more than that, you hate Gallagher for it. He’s a scrawny fucking kid who’s covered in freckles that fucking glow - you should not be interested.

But you are. You so very are. That fact that he’s really fucking good at what he does helps. Or doesn’t. Depends how you look at it. Whichever way, though, it’s Gallagher you wake up wondering about, Gallagher you go to sleep thinking about, Gallagher you spend your days side-eyeing the streets for.

And after a while, sometime between that a quick hand job while Mandy was showering, and the day he comes to your fucking house needing to see you, he’s maybe not just a fuck anymore. Maybe.

The fact that you let him see you when he needs to is something you don’t think about.

\-----

You’re at the Gallagher house. Ian’s house. And you’re not just there threatening to beat the shit out of Frank, or looking for Mandy, you’re there because Ian’s there. Because Ian’s upstairs sleeping, and if you’re lucky enough to have him back in your life - if you’re lucky enough to be back in his - then you want to be where he is.

Even if that means sleeping on the floor.

You can’t sleep, though. Your mind is going a million miles an hour as you try to figure out exactly what the fuck is going on, but all you come up with is Ian. Ian’s shock of red hair, Ian’s too fucking smug smirk, Ian’s warm eyes …

Ian’s eyes. They’re one thing you can never determine, never find the right name for, never stop trying to find the right shade to compare them to.

“Mick?”

You tense. He’s behind you on the stairs. All you wanted was a glass of water and a little space from the overwhelming everything that is Ian. You place your glass down and turn to face him.

His hair is sleep-rumpled and adorable.

“Watcha doin’ down here?” he asks.

“Water.”

He nods, walks towards you, boxers hanging low on hipbones you desperately want to suck marks into.

“Gotta say, man,” he begins, stopping to stand less than a foot away from you, “you’re the last fucking person I expected to see turn up at _The Fairy Tale_.”

You scoff. “Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly expect to see you coked out of your fucking brain, either.”

“Please, like you’ve never done coke before.”

“Not the point.”

He cocks an eyebrow, moves closer. “Then what is the point?”

The point is that his eyes weren’t blue. Shit. They were blue, but they weren’t blue. They weren’t that indescribable blue that shine through all the fucking bullshit in your life when everything turns to shit. They weren’t that startling blue that catches you by surprise every time they stare at you almost fondly. They weren’t that perfect fucking blue that you secretly wish you could wake up to for the next forever.

You say none of that, though, because you know it won’t make sense. Even the night before, with Ian high as fuck, your colour thing wouldn’t have made sense. Hell, if it doesn’t make sense to you, the one living with it, then it’s never going to make sense to anyone.

“Mickey.” His voice is barely a whisper as he moves to stand right in front of you, hands going around you, resting on the counter behind you.

You stare down, at the ground, at Ian’s stomach, at shape of his dick in his boxers, and you want to curse him out, scream at him, punch him in that godforsaken mouth of his. All for making you worry. You’ve literally lost sleep over the guy, and last night, when his blue eyes just weren’t _blue,_ you literally got no sleep.

You couldn’t sleep. Not when he was as fucked as he was, when there was the possibility of him choking on his own vomit. Not when you couldn’t believe you had finally found him, that he was finally back, that he might just up and leave at any moment.

“Mick.”

His hands are on your hips, hot and powerful, fingertips pressing slightly against your skin, and you know, you just fucking know, that they’re desperate to leave their own mark.

You meet his gaze. “You need to stop taking that shit.”

“You need to give me a reason to.”

It’s a punch to the fucking gut, face, and heart all at once. You don’t move; you don’t clench your jaw like you want to, you don’t blink on horror like you want to, you don’t pull away like you want to. You stay still, let his wash over you, give him a reason to.

“Ian. Please.”

He tilts his head, slips a knee between your thighs. “Please what?”

_Please everything_.

You push him back and go to drop to your knees, because for some fucked up you-and-Ian reason that seems like the appropriate thing to do, but he stops you with a hand on your arm.

“Sucking my dick ain’t a good enough reason, Mick.”

You know this. Sucking his dick isn’t the reason. _Please_ was the reason. The fact that you were damn near begging is the reason. But, as usual, you say none of that. You stare up at him, into his plain blue eyes, and beg.

“Fuck me.”

All his breath whooshes out of him in one go, and then he leans forward, hands still heavy on your hips, and licks a line from your collarbone to your jaw. It makes your knees weak. Ian’s hands snake around your waist to keep you up, and he chuckles darkly, bites sharply at the flesh where shoulder meets neck.

“Missed me, huh?”

“Fuck you.”

He pulls back, and an honest to god shiver of longing runs through you. “Say it.”

“Say what, shit head?”

“Say you missed me.”

“Fuck off, is what I’ll say.”

Ian shrugs. “You want me to fuck you? Say it.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, I’d rather fuck myself, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” He steps back, then stops, and you fight the smirk. You fail, but he wipes it right off you. “You want me to stick around? Say you missed me.”

_Suck my dick. Whenever I want._

And fuck you had sucked it, then and there. You’d been left hard and leaking, too, Ian coming down your mouth only moments before Fiona called him down for dinner. The only reason you hadn’t bolted the fuck out of this place was because Ian convinced you not to, with one single word.

_Stay._

You shove him, barely enough to move him, enough to feel his smooth skin beneath every pore on your hand. “So that’s how this is now, huh? I gotta do exactly what you say for you to stay? Gotta suck your dick whenever you want if I want you to come back?”

“Kinda like we switched places, huh?”

It takes you a moment to get it, and your heart seizes when you do. That’s what he thought. All that time, that’s how he thought things were. You say, he does. You make the rules, he abides by them. You tell him to fuck you, he does. When and where and how - always up to you. It makes you sick to think that’s what he thought.

It makes you want to cry when you realise that, for a lot of it, that’s exactly how it was.

“Tell me, Mick. Tell me you missed me.” He standing right in front of you again, voice a quiet plead.

You kiss him hard, one, two, three times, grasping his face in your hands, and murmur against him, “I missed you, you piece of shit. I fucking missed you.”

He kisses you back, devours you, touches you everywhere you want and need to be touched. He smothers your body with his, covers you and warms you, steadies you with his large hands that always seem to hold you so perfectly in place. He fucks you, slow and hard, against the counter behind you with your legs wrapped tightly around his ass.

“Mickey, _fuck.”_

You want to tell him to shut the fuck up. You want to tell him to say it again. You settle for a simple reply.

_“Ian.”_

He pulls his face out of your damp neck and stares at you with those eyes, those blue, blue, _blue_ eyes that burn your retinas and make you come, harder than you ever fucking have in your life.

\-----

Beautiful is not an everyday word in your vocabulary, but shit, neither are most of the words you could use to describe Ian when he’s lighting up your fucking life. Words like _mind-blowing_ and _gorgeous_ and _breathtaking._

_Perfect._

You keep those words to yourself, always. Words like vibrant and glowing and just fucking stunning aren’t words that escape your mouth. So instead you call him asshole, dick head, tough guy, but tough guy stops feeling like a sarcastic insult a mere three seconds after saying it.

And now, when Ian’s staring at you with wide eyes, looking hurt and betrayed and everything in between, not doing a damn thing to light up your life, he’s still fucking beautiful.

Lip speaks from his seat, but Ian’s eyes stay glued to yours, waiting, waiting, waiting for you to disagree with his brother, to stand up for him, to start a fight with Lip just for fucking the sake of it. But you don’t. You stare at him, at those eyes you desperately need to light up your life again, and say nothing.

Everyone’s watching the two of you - Carl next to Ian, Lip and Debbie in the front seats - but they don’t matter. It’s like they’re not even there, and even though you know that Ian’s waiting for you to say something, _anything,_ you can’t. Because you agree with Lip. Hell, you’re the one who brought it up on the drive to the fucking hospital, but you can’t say that out loud. Not yet.

So you stare back, silently will those eyes of his to light up with anger, disgust, hate, anything.

They don’t.

They stare at you, the same blue as every other blue in the goddamn world, and they stare. They wait.

Nothing.

Finally, Ian nods.

He doesn’t look at you again until Fiona’s there and Lip’s telling him to sign himself in.

\-----

_Tough guy_ sticks. It’s the only nickname that does, and you think it might be because of the utter fucking truth of the matter. When you get out of juvie, half turned on and half terrified that Gallagher is there waiting for you, all you can think is _holy fucking fuck_. Because the guy hasn’t just shot up in height, but he’s filled out, and it takes everything you have to drag your gaze away form him.

But his muscles that night, in the dugout that stupidly holds one of your best memories, _tough guy_ came to be, and never fucking left, because when you watch Ian pull himself up, watch every fucking muscle you can see tense with the power of _him,_ it’s so fucking hot and infuriating and awesome.

His biceps, his abs, his thighs - fuck, his thighs aren’t on show now, but when they are, when they’re pressing to the sides of your head, quivering and twitching and squeezing, it’s enough to tear you apart, enough to make you lose control and shove a hand down your pants for some kind of relief.

When his thighs press to the back of yours, hot and sweaty, hairs prickling at you in the most de-fucking-lightful way imaginable.

Three days later, he pins your hands to the wall of the cooler at work, literally holds you in places as he grinds his hard dick against your ass, and all you can do is grit your teeth and happily fucking take it.

“Fucking tough guy, huh?”

You feel his smirk, the recognition in his voice when he replies with _yeah, Mick_ , and you vow then and there to never call him that again because this nickname thing cannot become a goddamn habit. You don’t do long-lasting nicknames; you do _fuck face_ and _dip shit_ and _Howdy Doody_.

But every now and then, when you let your guard down, or when Ian’s being a bigger dork than usual, it’ll slip out, and Ian will get that twinkle in his eyes that makes you not hate yourself so much for saying it.

_Tough guy_. It fits.

\-----  
You watch and you hurt and your eyes fucking burn when Ian turn to you. Waiting your approval? Waiting for you to stop him? You don’t know, so you nod, try to show him that it’s the right thing to do without telling him it’s what you need him to do, and hope like fuck it’s the answer he’s looking for.

You haven’t said anything to him, can’t bring yourself to say anything to him, refuse to be the one who pushes him into this. Despite your words in the car while Ian slept on your shoulder, _you can’t do this_. You want to be the one to make him better - fuck how you want to be the one to save him - but you can’t be the one who makes him get help against his will. Not now. Not today. You’d rather stand back like a fucking pussy while his brother and sister sign him in. You’d rather Lip be the bad guy here.

You’d rather not be in a position where you might somehow lose him. Again.

_You tried_ , Lip had said.

It wasn’t enough.

Anything could have happened.

And now, as Ian leans down and kisses Yevgeny - your kid, who you didn’t realise until Ian took off with him that you cared a whole fucking lot about - you begin to feel truly sick, like you might throw up if this carries on any longer. If what’s going to happen actually happens, because how the fuck are you supposed to go home without him? How?

He turns to look at you, and he’s finally there. Still scared, still unsure, but there. All sedation gone. Just Ian and those eyes that just aren’t blue enough. And the burning in your eyes gets hotter and harder to push away and -

_Sorry._

_Sorry._

_Sorry._

It’s the first thing he’s said since walking out of that cell, and the fact that he says it to you tears at your fucking heart. When he walks away, without waiting for a response, too scared to hear what you might or might not say, you’re heart breaks and breaks and breaks. Again, you don’t stop to think. You just do. You do what you want, what you need, what Ian needs.

You follow.

Like you should have done so many times before.

It’s different this time, Ian’s arms swooping around you the second he realises you’re coming in for another hug, and you hate it, hate that you need him, that you need this, that you need his arms around you, when he needs you so much more. For a moment there, it’s purely selfish because you just fucking need.

Ian needs more, but even in his state he holds you tight, lets you finally fucking break, and presses himself into you. More than that, though, he _finallyfinallyfinally_ lets himself need you. Lets you hold him up as he shakes against you, lets you grasp him close as his whole world falls apart, lets you be there while his tears dampen your shirt.

You kiss his shoulder, press yourself into him one last time when you’re told you can’t go in with him, when it fully hits you that this is it, this is the last time you will see him for however long, and you don’t want to let go, won’t let go, have to let go.

He turns to look at you before he walks away, and his eyes are blue. Just blue. Nothing exceptional or showy or beautiful about the colour.

But it's still your favourite colour.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr!](http://wehangout.tumblr.com/)


End file.
